Covington’s talk coincides with the publication by the North Carolina Collection of his book The Good Government Man: Albert Coates and the Early Years of the Institute of Government, which is being distributed by the UNC Press. The book follows Coates’s life through his student days at UNC, his law education at Harvard, and his return to UNC, where he founded the Institute of Government in 1931 as a place to provide continuing education to North Carolina state and local public officials.

The Institute (now the School of Government) has grown to become the largest university-based local government training, advisory, and research organization in the United States.

The Good Government Man depicts Coates’s striking originality and his sometimes exasperating determination. Among the notable figures making appearances in the book are novelist Thomas Wolfe; U.S. senators Frank Porter Graham and Sam Ervin, Jr.; state supreme court justice Susie Sharp; F.B.I. director J. Edgar Hoover; and every North Carolina governor from Locke Craig to Terry Sanford.

Copies of The Good Government Man will be available for sale and signing at the event.